Tag: greek

The Elemental Cycle: An Update

On By nexusfictionIn Books, ebooks, Erotic Fantasy Fiction, Fantasy Fiction, fiction, magic, mythology, newbooks, Reading, Uncategorized, wizards, writingLeave a comment

vrperFor those paying attention, it has been a while since anything was released from the Elemental Cycle. The reasons for this are myriad (marketing and editing issues, whole-scale relocation etc) but the good news is JW Whitmarsh is still writing and book five ‘Mars Fallen’ is in its final stages. Therefore this seems like a good point to look at what is to come in the next few months for the Elemental Cycle.

The first thing on the horizon is a second edition of ‘Valkyrie Rising’ with all new artwork consistent with the spellbound editions of the Books of Water. Hot on the heels of that we expect to be able to release the first edition of ‘Mars Fallen’. As for what lies in stall after that, we thought it best to ask the author….

Nexus Fiction: We’ve had three books from Water, one book from Earth and one book coming from Fire. How can we expect the story to continue from here? Are we going to start again from Air and Spirit or are the stories unfolding going to continue before that?

JW Whitmarsh: It’s always a difficulty when writing a story that develops across continents keeping hold of what is concurrent and what is consecutive. That said, the further the story goes on the more linear it will become. So far book 3 of water finishes before then end of book 1 of Earth, while book 1 of Earth finishes a couple of months before the end of book 1 of Fire.Fallenstraightened

NX: Will that staggering of events continue through the next volumes?

JW: We shall see. Nominally, I consider book 2 of Earth to be book 6 overall and book 2 of Fire to be book 7 but they will happen in tandem.

NX: Do you intend to write them in tandem?

JW: Provisionally, but the writing process is never simple. You have to allow yourself to be carried along. Some chapters are also easier than others. In many ways the prospect of writing two stories simultaneously is quite appealing. It’s harder to get writers block when you have two outlets.

NX: Is writer’s block a constant issue for any writer?

JW: I can’t speak for all writers. What I would say is that for me it’s never a case of running out of ideas; it’s more how to organise them and bring them to life. But more than that it’s about having the time to sit down and work through whatever is giving you difficulty. I prefer to write in long blocks of hours. Unfortunately, life doesn’t give you those all that often.

NX: What has been the biggest problem with ‘Mars Fallen’?

JW: I would say pacing and balance more than anything else. With previous volumes the story has primarily revolves around a singular protagonist. ‘Mars Fallen’ has three. Finding the right way to give each their voice is a new challenge.

NX: There are many characters in the Elemental Cycle. Are there any that you find easier to write than others?

JW: Yes. [Spoiler alert]. Tovrik is generally quite easy to write because he comes from a perspective of knowledge. He has spend so long in study that there is no need to show a road of discovery. He has his history already, he is fully formed. Whenever I write Tovrik there is a sense of confidence that I know what he is going to say or how he is going to react because nothing surprises him.

NX: By the same token then, who is the hardest to write?

JW: Probably Caleigh. She has the burden of carrying the story quite often and doing that while asserting your identity is not easy.  Coupled with the fact that her identity is not yet fully formed. She is being asked to do things that are utterly unreasonable for someone of her age and experience. So often she is in the role of learning by doing that it’s difficult to know until something is in process how she’s going to feel about it.

NX: Will we ever get to see more into the lives of the support characters?

JW: Well, yes. In the main story there are many who have a great role yet to play. In terms of stand alone stories though, there are a few. We’ve talked about it before and the more I think about it the more I’m sure there will be some side tales for Owain, Ysabelle and Eleric. I can definitely see a prequel trilogy there.

NX: It may be far too early to ask but have you thought about what is to come for the world of the Elemental Cycle after the Elemental Cycle is finished?

JW: Yeah, there are several thoughts in motion. I don’t see there being direct sequels as by the time the Elemental Cycle is done there will be plenty enough but I have ideas for the world some hundreds of years after.

NX: Can you give any clues about what that might be?

JW: Pirate wizards. That’s all I’m saying for now. We’re a number of years away from that.

NX: Suppose a new reader sees ‘Mars Fallen’, can they join the Elemental Cycle at that point?

JW: There’s no strict order so far from element to element. It’s possible to start from Book 1 of fire if you like. A lot of things will make more sense for readers who start on the Book of Water but that’s not to say there isn’t as good a journey working from Fire first. As an author you are kind of omnipotent in your world so you can never predict exactly what experience a reader will have when they don’t know what is going to happen.

NX: Going back to the previous point about intersection of storylines, do you have a notion of where the books of Air and Spirit are going to fit in?

JW: First of all, there’s not necessarily going to be distinct trilogies as with the Book of Water. That may well be the only time that three stories of one element conveniently flow into each other. It’s also quite likely that the other elements will not have 3 distinct parts. Earth and Fire are on a definite collision course and I think that is something we can expect a lot from here on with all the elements.

…

There you have it. Look out for more pages being added to this website along the way and for links to the new books as they are released.

New pages on fire magic coming soon

On By nexusfictionIn Books, ebooks, Erotic Fantasy Fiction, Fantasy Fiction, fiction, magic, mythology, newbooks, Reading, Uncategorized, wizards, writingLeave a comment

After a quiet summer on the Nexus front we are now settling down to a new run of activity. A new book is coming this season – Mars Fallen – where we will be taken into the classical world of the Senatian Empire where the element of fire is dominant. To tell us more we have the author JW Whitmarsh dragged back from exile by a pair of obedient centaurs.

Nexus Fiction: First of all, welcome back. It’s been a while. What have you been up to?

JW Whitmarsh: Yes. I’d love to say I’ve been working hard in my writing retreat reeling out chapter after chapter of new stories but alas the truth is more prosaic.Humdrum realities such as earning money and moving house have got in the way of creative endeavours of late.

NX: Normal life can be so inconsiderate. So what can we expect from the fire magic of the Imperium?

JW: As I think I might have said in a previous interview, magic is handled very differently in the Imperium. There it is believed that all magic comes from the Gods of the Pantheon and the magically-gifted are, on the whole, absorbed into the clergy.

NX: The classical world had many deities.How do you fit that into the way you have broken down magic before by the elements?

JW: I have restricted myself to 12 Gods (arguably the more prominent ones from classical mythology) and grouped them into four groups of three, four triads, if you will; Heliomantic, which includes Jupiter, Apollo and Minerva, Geomantic – Vesta, Vulcan and Ceres, Astromantic – Mars, Mercury and Neptune, and Lunarmantic for Diana, Juno and Venus.

NX: You’ve decided to go with the Roman names rather than the Greek.

JW: Initially, the story starts in the equivalent of the Western Empire so that made sense. Also Vesta has a role not mirrored by Hestia and the Vestal Virgins are a pretty important element to the novel.

NX: Going back to the groupings, are the priesthoods of each triad linked in the same way that the three disciplines of Enchantment are?

JW: No. The devotion of different Gods is kept entirely separate. The traitor Empyrean who was the architect of how fire magic would be learned gave thought to what might follow if one who was magically gifted could learn all that he had learned and so deliberately propagated the idea that one could only be blessed by a single deity at a time.

NX: So the Imperium has no great wizards like Caerddyn?

JW: No. Indeed the concept of a wizard who was in control of their own magic is a foreign one. The clergy of the Imperium are taught that magic only goes through them by the will of the Gods.

NX: Moving sideways slightly and with due care for spoilers, can you tell us why the contemporary wizards can’t learn all spells from their element in the way that the traitors did? Does that mean the past can never be matched?

JW: It’s a mixture. You have to remember that the traitors were the greatest wizards of their day in an age where magic was at its zenith. They were the guys who were left standing from the fight with Xyraxis and his arch demons where all others mages (bar Loreliath) perished. So all things being equal they would be hard to emulate anyway. There’s also the matter of what happens when you specialise. To go deeper into certain Arts you need a way of thinking that may be mutually exclusive with learning others. The expert specialists of the world contemporary to the stories would definitely be able to do magic within their Arts that had never occurred to their originators.

NX: So in a sense the magic of the contemporary world is more advanced than that used by the traitors?

JW: I’m not sure about advanced because that implies improvement. It’s more involved. An analogy might be something like in classical times Latin was widely spoken across western Europe. Now instead we have Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian. If you pulled someone from the ancient world and compared them, speakers of each of those languages would be better at them than the Latin-speaker but if those speakers had never had any training in each others’ languages it is quite possible that the Latin-speaker would have the best cross language understanding because his/her language is the basis for all of them. Does that make sense?

NX: Actually yes. Does it follow that the priests and priestesses of the Imperium would be better at their disciplines than their Western Lands counterparts because of their focus?

JW: No, because they have been beset by false limitations. I think overall if you were to look at the world of the Elemental Cycle the places with the most impressive mages, the ones who most fit our idea of wizards, would most likely be found either in the Western Lands or in one of the mage cultures of ancient world.

NX: By which you mean the pre-classical civilisations?

JW: Yes, the equivalents of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Assyria and Persia.

NX: When will we get to see them?

JW: Not for a while yet. Not this year certainly.

NX: On which subject, can you share your progress with us?

JW: Mars Fallen is nearly finished. There’s maybe one or two chapters to go. After that it will have to go through editing. We will see it this season, I expect. I intend to write Venus Ascending and A Clash of Gods in parallel so there may be a long wait before we see anything more. This time next year we could be talking about what’s to come in book 6 or book 9, who knows? As I said at the beginning of this, for authors as much as anyone life sometimes takes us in unexpected directions.

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